Chapter 9 Epiphanies in July
Epiphanies in July
ISAAC HAD never felt more like twenty than he did at Jimmy Bob’s pool.
He and Allegra went together during the weekdays, when the office was slow and Luca didn’t have enough for Allegra to do, or when she was too sick or too tired to move in the morning.
Isaac had been the one to call Luca that first week, when Luca had dropped her off four days running so she could collapse on the couch and sleep.
Isaac would feed her, she’d thank him groggily, eat everything he put in front of her—usually on a TV tray—and then she’d wander off to bed.
Saturday morning, he’d called Luca and told him that the two of them should go out, get some lunch, and bring some home to Allegra, because if anybody needed to sleep in, she did.
And after that he considered himself the family mole.
If she was too tired at night, he’d call Luca and tell him that he was going to have to answer his own phones for a day.
When Luca wasn’t able to make it to work on his grandparents’ house, Isaac started going in for her.
And when it was too slow—or when Jimmy Bob’s niece could be pulled from her summer vacation between college classes—Isaac would take her to the pool, with the animals, the shredded furniture, the never-ending supply of canned sparkling water and apples, and, oh my God yes, the pool.
Isaac started to make food for Jimmy Bob too, which either he or Allegra would leave in the man’s fridge if they visited, using the key he had given Luca.
Something about lying out in that pool, in that comfortable, battered bachelor pad, with a couple of giant mixed-breed dogs who loved to swim, and two tiny Chihuahua rescues who preferred to hang out on the floaties with Isaac and Allegra, made Isaac remember his own idyllic days back in college.
Somebody’s parents or apartment complex or rich uncle always had a pool.
Or there were trips to the lake or the river—frolicking in water had been something they’d taken for granted back then, and something adults seemed to lose.
But this summer, between Jimmy Bob and Luca bringing burgers to grill or Isaac and Allegra hitting the place in the morning before it got too hot, Isaac’s normally vampire-pale skin was a soft brown, and his hair was streaked and a little long, so his ringlets looked tinted.
And the sheer hedonism of treating summer like summer, instead of like that time he felt guilty for not working because Todd had work, made him feel all glowy and healthy, inside and out.
So there he was, Friday evening toward the end of July, four weeks left before school started again, eyes half closed on the floaty while the wet dogs all snoozed in a pile in the shade, when a hand, cool and firm, cupped the back of his neck and reminded him he needed to put sunblock on.
“Getting crispy,” Luca murmured in his ear, and Isaac turned a dreamy smile to him.
“I am feeling like a golden-brown chicken on a rotisserie,” he said with some satisfaction, and Luca’s throaty chuckle warmed his stomach—or, well, his groin—with such a natural arousal he didn’t even question it.
True to his promises, Luca had been kissing him pretty much whenever he came over.
In front of his sister, there were chaste kisses on the cheek, but once she went to bed?
Long, drugging kisses on the couch, lingering, aching kisses by his door, or—once—a hot, blatantly carnal kiss in Luca’s truck after a date—an actual date—which had included dinner, a movie, dessert, and hands in low places, until they had both practically leapt across the bench seat of the truck to pant in their corners.
“Isaac?” Luca had finally breathed, unbuckling his belt and adjusting himself—blatantly and without apology—inside his jeans.
“Yeah?” Isaac’s Dockers were really roomy, and he was grateful, because otherwise he’d be in Luca’s same predicament.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, because I swore I wouldn’t push you, but have you thought maybe we should take this inside at some point?”
Isaac had closed his eyes, and for a moment he was lost in all the places his skin was tingling—his lips, his cock, his taint, the inside of his thighs. Even his hands from their perusal of Luca’s nicely furred chest.
Suddenly it was all he could do not to lunge across the seat and ruck Luca’s shirt off in an effort to taste his surprisingly pink nipples.
“Yes,” he breathed, not even aware he’d said the word. “Yes. God yes. We should take this inside.”
“No!” Luca moaned. “Not tonight—of all nights!”
Isaac started to pull himself out of his sexual haze. “Not tonight?” he almost whimpered.
“Yeah. No. God, after what? Two months? May, June, half of July—yeah. After two or three centuries, Isaac, I want it to be good. I gotta get up early tomorrow so we can get this guy’s swimming pool done while he’s still on vacation.”
Isaac had heard about this job. It took a good six weeks to install a pool, and while this installation had gone well—and more than helped to make up for the mother-in-law cottage job that had gotten yanked away in May—the weather had been hellifically hot.
If Isaac and Allegra went swimming, they were usually inside by noon, and Luca had been getting his workers up at four so they could take full advantage of the 5:00 a.m. daylight, and they could be home by two.
Anything after that was unhealthy, and everybody was looking forward to the bonus they would get if they could get the pool installed, the concrete seasoned, and the thing full and treated before the homeowner returned from a trip to Europe.
But getting up at four in the morning had cut Luca and Isaac’s evenings short, and Isaac was starting to realize that he wasn’t going to be able to just fall into Luca’s bed like a bad habit or something.
He had to make a conscious decision, plan long and plan well, and choose to be with this man, choose to make love to him.
Choose to have a relationship with somebody, instead of having them boss him around and into it.
Because that’s what Todd had done, wasn’t it? Granted, Isaac had been a hot mess at the time. He very well could have partied himself out of the credential program and into an early grave if somebody hadn’t taken control of his life—he hadn’t been doing it.
And in that way, Todd hadn’t been a bad choice, really.
He’d been organized, career oriented, driven.
He’d been able to say, “No, we’re not going out clubbing, because we both have work in the morning,” and Isaac had seen this was the sensible thing to do.
And eventually clubbing on Friday night had seemed too exhausting, and Saturday night had been for Todd’s work friends, and Sunday was for grading papers and… .
And Isaac had, one good decision at a time, grown up.
But he’d also grown inward. There were things he really loved—movies, for instance.
Lazing in a swimming pool. Day trips to places like the beach or the mountains or the zoo.
Marmalade tomcats with a weakness for kitty weed and the zoomie potential of a thousand suns.
Cooking. Singing at the top of his lungs while he was doing something mindless, like washing the dishes or watering the garden.
Choosing colorful wall hangings or rugs that would make his house happy.
Having his stack of clean underwear in the drawer but his stack of clean cargo shorts on top of it.
Going into his yarn room with pattern books and dreaming about the things he could make instead of plodding industriously through to a finished object.
Stupid things. Little things. Important things.
Things that made Isaac Isaac.
Those things had been forgotten. Those things had been forced inside him, and Luca’s encouragement to find them again, to celebrate them—that had freed him.
Luca had been right. If he just finished his sentences—“Todd really hated it when I played the music out loud and sang along”—the thing that he heard back was usually… wonderful.
“Well, you’re a little out of tune, but maybe if we turn the music up and both sing louder, nobody will care.”
Which was what they’d been doing when Allegra had come out of her room from her nap and—instead of yelling at them—joined them.
And later that evening, after dinner, after Allegra had gone back to sleep, when Isaac and Luca were cuddling on the couch, watching something on television with explosions and hard pectorals, Isaac finished the rest of the memory.
“I think the reason he hated music,” he’d said, feeling the memory out, “was that his mom made him attend church a lot when he was a kid. He never said as much, but I think she was literally trying to pray the gay away. When he came out and she told him he couldn’t go back, I think the music was what he missed.
He had a nice singing voice—maybe it hurt him to not be able to use it like he had when he was a kid. ”
“Yeah, but Isaac, isn’t singing for celebration? Any celebration?” Luca’s soft laugh hadn’t been disparaging, which allowed Isaac to forgive him for what he said next. “I mean, you, me, my sister—we were celebrating today, right? Being happy, being together?”
Isaac remembered that moment in his classroom with Roxy and their students, and how they’d danced like idiots to a fifteen-year-old song, and how… how affirming that had been. For him and Roxy, sure, but for the kids too, because joy was something they had to work not to lose.
“Maybe that was it,” Isaac had murmured. “Todd felt like he had to be perfect to be happy. And he had to make me perfect so I could make him happy.”
“Yeah. Maybe that’s it. But that’s no fair to you at all, you know?” Luca’s arms tightened around his chest then. “I have the best time with you. I feel like we make each other happy, even when we’re not perfect.”